Broken Jade - Chapter 135

Chapter 135

Seeing this, Shadow Seven tactfully withdrew.

Truthfully, she had wanted to stay a little longer and enjoy the spectacle.

Wei Yi had never understood matters of the heart. Even when courting a girl, he had to humbly seek advice from her and the seasoned romantics at Mingyue Pavilion. It had truly left an entire crowd speechless.

That was what she thought, but Shadow Seven still did not have the nerve to actually stay.

As she left, she cast Wei Yi an encouraging look and considerately closed the door behind her.

Your Highness the Heir, make the most of this opportunity.

……

Silence returned to the room.

“I didn’t expect you to actually come.”

Wei Yi stared fixedly at her. The sharpness he usually carried was gone, replaced by a trace of… grievance.

Sheng Zhaoning grew flustered beneath that gaze. She looked at him in disbelief, finding this version of Wei Yi frighteningly unfamiliar.

“Does Your Highness have something to say?” she asked, somehow forcing down the tremor in her heart.

Yet Wei Yi seemed to be hurt by her words.

The warmth in his eyes faded little by little, while the hand clasped behind his back tightened into a fist.

Today, he had set aside all his pride and dignity. He had lowered his head, trying to find even the last trace of affection Sheng Zhaoning might still hold for him.

He slowly approached her and stopped when only a single step separated them.

With near-humble pleading, he asked, “Come with me. Let’s start over. All right?”

Sheng Zhaoning looked at him. The events of the past rose before her one after another, and she asked with faint mockery in her voice, “Did we ever have a past?”

One-sided love did not count as a past.

A past filled with humiliation was not worth remembering, either.

“We did.” Wei Yi’s eyes were red as he gazed steadily at her. “The fact that I didn’t understand it then doesn’t mean we had no past.”

How could they not have had one?

When they first met, that small, soft girl with rosy cheeks had looked at him from beneath the apricot tree. That single glance had reached straight into his heart, bringing with it a panic unlike anything he had ever felt. He had nearly fallen from the tree.

Later, he had deliberately chosen the most beautiful branch from the apricot tree, broken it off, and given it to her.

That was how Sheng Zhaoning came to love apricot blossoms for so many years.

He did not know whether she had thought of those memories too. But the memories she had fallen into were clearly not the same ones he remembered.

“If we did, then it was filled with pain and darkness. What makes you think I would long for it?”

Sheng Zhaoning believed she had already given Wei Yi everything she had.

She had loved him without reservation, only to fall alone into an abyss with no end in sight.

He had mocked her, ignored her, and hurt her without restraint.

What was there in such a past worth clinging to?

And how could it even be called a past?

Wei Yi seemed to see the pain hidden in her eyes, and a dense, bitter emotion spread through every part of him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice trembling.

“I’ve never loved anyone before, and I didn’t know what love was supposed to be.”

No one had ever told him what love was or how to love someone.

He had grown up amid struggles for power, raised in the wind and sand of the frontier. His entire heart had been filled with power and influence. He had been told that he had to seize the position far away in the Capital and claim the realm for himself.

When there was something he wanted, all he knew was how to take it and fight for it.

So after Sheng Zhaoning suddenly disappeared, the emotion that slowly filled his heart amid his panic and helplessness was anger at being abandoned and left behind.

Later, she returned to his side as a Shadow Guard, transformed into a monster who knew nothing but killing.

Wei Yi could not find a trace of the past in her.

She could stand before him without changing expression as she tortured and slaughtered, by the cruelest means, the people who had tried to assassinate him.

Blood covered her hands, while her victims’ organs lay scattered across the ground.

Wei Yi had nearly been driven mad by hatred.

He did not understand why the small, soft girl who had always stayed by his side had become this way.

He could not accept it.

So he used the most vicious words and the harshest revenge to torment and hurt her.

He thought that doing so would erase the hatred he felt toward her.

But when those sharp, hidden blades stabbed into her, were they not tormenting him as well?

“Sheng Zhaoning, I was wrong before.”

The corners of Wei Yi’s eyes burned. He moved closer and said in an almost pleading tone, “Turn around and look at me. I’ll take you back to Liangzhou.”

“Love me again, all right?”

He would use everything he had to make amends and learn how to love her.

Sheng Zhaoning gazed at the man standing so close before her, bitterness filling her eyes.

“There’s no going back.”

She looked at him intently and asked in the calmest voice she could manage, “Wei Yi, can you tell the difference between love and possession?”

“You simply enjoyed having someone who would always stand behind you-obedient, loyal, and strong. But the moment that person followed someone else and walked away, that enjoyment turned into a vicious desire to possess her.”

“That isn’t love.”

Wei Yi’s gaze trembled, but he stared at her stubbornly. “How do you know I can’t tell the difference?”

He could.

Otherwise, where had this heart-piercing agony come from?

He reached behind his back and brought out the woodcarving he had hidden there, presenting it to her like a precious treasure.

“Look. We can go back. We can… start over.” Couldn’t they?

Sheng Zhaoning’s pupils quivered.

Her breathing grew ragged as she stared at the woodcarving. Her entire body tensed in an instant, and her lips began to tremble against her will.

It was an unpainted wooden carving, rough and plain except for the vivid splash of red at its tip-an Apricot Blossom Woodcarving.

Once, it had been her most treasured possession.

She reached out and took it almost without thinking, unable to resist.

It was just as rough and ugly as she remembered.

Sheng Zhaoning still remembered her “birthday” when she was ten. No one else had remembered. Only Wei Yi had treated the day Prince Zhenbei found her as her birthday.

He had personally carved a tiny Apricot Blossom Woodcarving and given it to her.

Sheng Zhaoning had cherished it like the rarest treasure in the world.

Through the Shadow Guard Camp’s endless, lightless slaughter, the Apricot Blossom Woodcarving she carried with her had been the only thing keeping her alive.

Night after night, she had clung to it as she summoned Wei Yi’s face from memory.

And somehow, she had fought with everything she had and survived.

Yet that woodcarving, which had held all her longing and hope, had been burned by Wei Yi’s own hand after she emerged from the Shadow Guard Camp alive and thought she had finally stepped into the sunlight.

Sheng Zhaoning swayed on her feet, tears slowly welling in her eyes.

“But it’s already too late.”

If only he had done this a little sooner. If only he had done it while she was still in Xuzhou…

Perhaps the two of them would never have come to this.

But sadly, there truly was no going back.

Sheng Zhaoning raised her reddened eyes, making no attempt to hide the sorrow in them. “Wei Yi, I’m glad you’ve finally learned what it means to love someone.”

After everything that had happened, she no longer doubted his feelings.

Perhaps Wei Yi truly did love her. It was just that-

“That love isn’t mine to have.”

He already had someone with whom he could spend the rest of his life.

Second Miss Chi, who had thrown herself into loving him like a moth into flame, driven just as mad by love as Sheng Zhaoning once had been.

And she was his betrothed.

Sheng Zhaoning lifted the Apricot Blossom Woodcarving and held it before his eyes.

“The past is already past. There is no need to live it all over again.”

Just like this woodcarving. No matter how closely it resembled the old one, it would never be the same.

“Let go. Set me free, and set yourself free too.”

“Neither of us has owed the other anything for a long time now.”

The woodcarving slipped from her fingers and fell into the abyss.

Never again would it stir a single ripple.

A scalding tear traced the corner of her eye and fell soundlessly.

Wei Yi clamped his hand around her wrist. When he caught the fleeting glimmer of tears at the corner of her eye, it felt as though a blade had torn open his heart and twisted inside it, leaving him in unbearable agony.

His vision blurred with tears. For the first time, Wei Yi felt the urge to cry.

Don’t go…

The words lodged in his throat, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not force them out.

She was standing right beside him. So why, no matter how humbly he begged, could he still not have her?

If he let her leave now…

Would he truly lose her forever?

She wrenched his hand away.

Sheng Zhaoning pulled free as though struggling out of a bottomless abyss.

She did not turn around. She merely closed her eyes, swallowed all her bitterness and pain, and said, enunciating every word, “Your Highness the Heir, please conduct yourself with dignity.”

The hand around her wrist instantly went slack at those words.

Sheng Zhaoning drew a deep breath and walked away, her steps unsteady.

Behind her, a hoarse voice rang out with obsessive determination.

“You were the one who sent Zhou Wei to Yanzhou.”

She froze.

Wei Yi watched her halt once again for another man. A sinister darkness crept into his eyes, and he let out a bleak laugh.

In the end, only threats and coercion could make her stay, even for a moment.

“If you still want him alive, I’ll be waiting here for you in three days.”